October 23, 2009<\/p>\n
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I had a Warholian moment in Beijing today.\u00a0 It\u2019s my first stop on a pretty long business trip that will take me from here to Kuala Lumpur for a golf industry conference, then to Calcutta chasing business, then on to Rome to look at possibly sites for golf courses and to see my good friend, Luca Valerio, who built the first \u201cAmerican\u201d style golf course in Italy and is now advising various factions in the Italian development world on golf and tourism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anyway, I met an American friend for coffee the morning after I had arrived in Beijing, flying in from Narita near midnight.\u00a0 He had a copy of the Wednesday edition of the Global Times<\/em>, published in Beijing, one of two official English language newspapers published by the Chinese government.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Wikipedia says about the Global Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u201cEstablished first as a Chinese language<\/a> publication in 1993<\/a>, an English language<\/a> version was launched on April 20, 2009 as part of a Chinese campaign costing 45 billion yuan<\/a> ($6.6 billion) to compete with overseas media.<\/p>\n Hu Xijin<\/a>, the editor of the the English-language version, has stated that he expects it to make a loss of 20 million Chinese Yuan<\/a> in the first year.\u201d<\/p>\n This business model suggests that if he ever leaves publishing, Mr. Hu could may well have a future in the golf industry, with his insouciant attitude toward losing money.<\/p>\n So my friend, Kirk, hands me his copy of the Global Times<\/em> and points to the right hand column on page 7, a Lifestyle\/Fitness piece by Tong Ting entitled \u201cChina tees up for 2016.\u201d\u00a0 All of us in the golf business are acutely aware of the importance of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, because it\u2019s about the only good news the golf business has heard in the last two years. \u00a0Jim Litke of the AP interviewed me for a piece on the global significance of golf getting into the Olympics, and Ms Ting culled a juicy quote that referenced China, to wit:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019When you travel across China, you see basketball courts and soccer fields everywhere, because they are now Olympic sports.\u00a0 Now countries like China and India will use the Tiger Woods model\u2014stressing things like his fitness and dedication\u2014and change the perception that it\u2019s a non-athletic hobby for rich people,\u2019 said John Strawn, the president of Hills\/Forrest, a golf architecture and design firm that has completed projects in over 20 countries, in an interview with the Associated Press.\u201d<\/p>\n So there I was, having coffee in the Crown Plaza hotel about fifteen minutes by foot from Tiananmen Square, and reading my own words in a Chinese newspaper.\u00a0 Kirk said this would have a big effect on potential Chinese clients, \u201cproving\u201d that I am in fact a world-renowned expert in golf design and development.<\/p>\n That\u2019s cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n I have always read the China Daily with some delight when I am in China, not because of its \u201cnews,\u201d which adheres to the party line and is predictable, but because of its miscellany, called \u201cFrom widely read Chinese media,\u201d which lead with headlines such as:<\/p>\n Woman lies flat on road after quarrel with lover<\/strong>, from the Qianjiang Evening News.\u00a0 \ufffd \u2018A woman laid down on a busy crossing in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, for more than half an hour after a fight with her boyfriend on Sunday.<\/p>\n The woman got up from the middle of the road only after her boyfriend apologized.\u201d<\/p>\n Now this is a newspaper read almost exclusively by foreigners, and we have to take it on faith that these stories were in fact printed in regional papers.\u00a0 But it makes us wonder, what\u2019s important to know about to the average Chinese person?\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s another example, headline in bold with the entire story following:<\/p>\n \u201cDrunk biker imagines tree on road, falls in canal<\/strong><\/p>\n A heavily intoxicated biker rode into a dirty canal after hallucinating there was a tree in the middle of the road in Tianjin municipality last week.<\/p>\n The man said he was only trying to avoid a crashing into the tree when he swerved and fell into the canal.<\/p>\n He was pulled out by nearby residents who heard him scream for help.\u201d<\/p>\n Now I think I know what happened to Jack Handy, who used to write for Saturday Night Live.\u00a0 He\u2019s editing the most important English-language newspaper in China.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are important issues of public policy in China\u2014resource management, environmental stresses, hundreds of millions of people still living in poverty.\u00a0 But those damn trees in the middle of the road!\u00a0<\/p>\n China is now the biggest car market in the world\u2014over a million vehicles sold in July, more than in the USA, which has been the world\u2019s automensch for nearly a century.\u00a0 1,500 new cars are sold in Beijing every day, most to novice drivers who are immediately put onto the road system in front of my taxi.\u00a0 I have yet to take a cab ride in Beijing without seeing at least one accident, often involving a car and a truck or a car and a motorcycle, which speaks to the principle at work here: small challenges big.\u00a0 Any mode of transportation in a Chinese city is a test of wills.\u00a0 After all, this country is officially committed to equality\u2014I mean, it\u2019s a communist<\/em> country.\u00a0\u00a0 But of course they made a different deal from the one prevailing in the US: freedom to pursue economic gain as long as you don\u2019t challenge the party\u2019s authority.\u00a0 Our hobby is more or less the opposite: denigrating the government, and for that right we\u2019re willing to practice transferring wealth up\u2014Wall Street takes the risk, the people endure the downside.\u00a0\u00a0 Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich.\u00a0 The culture wars are a perfect cover for this dodge.\u00a0\u00a0 Keep the folks mad at all those grasping politicians while the money, unlike water, flows up.<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible not to appreciate the vigor and vitality of the Chinese people.\u00a0 America and China have so little in common, and yet for an American the Chinese\u2014inheritors of the world\u2019s longest continuous high civilization, as opposed to the \u201cnew\u201d American\u2014have a familiar liveliness.\u00a0\u00a0 I rode in a taxi today whose driver was listening to a western classical music station.\u00a0 When we stopped at a traffic light I give him a wordless thumbs-up.\u00a0 It was nice listening to familiar, serene melodies amidst the mad thrum of Beijing traffic.\u00a0\u00a0 Otherwise we could not communicate, a situation that I always find very distressing.\u00a0\u00a0 I mean, I talk to people on elevators<\/em>.\u00a0 Spending a half hour in a car with someone I can\u2019t talk to is distressing to me.\u00a0 I want to know, where did you come from?\u00a0 Did you grow up in Beijing, or did you come from the countryside in search of a better life?\u00a0 Why is it so hard for you to find your way around this city?\u00a0 (I always have the hotel translate the addresses of the places where I am going, but it is always a long discussion first, and very often I have to call once or twice and hand the phone to the driver for someone where I am going to act like an air-traffic controller and guide him in.)<\/p>\n So I don\u2019t know China at all, but I love its mad energy.\u00a0 My hotel in Beijing is near the center of the city, and along a famous pedestrian shopping street, and in the early evening as I took a stroll, there were countless pods of tourists, all in identical bright hats, following the flags of their guides in obedient good cheer.\u00a0 These were not foreign tourists, but Chinese people, from the countryside by the look of them, visiting the grand capital, posing for pictures, smiling at their good fortune in being at the vital center of the celestial city.\u00a0 I\u2019m happy to be here, too.<\/p>\n \u00a0More tomorrow, God willing….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nThe story in full reads:<\/p>\n